problem on the photo i.d. or any of these other issues. >> so professor, to follow-up and may be pushed back a little bit on your methodology, i wonder in the current climate where the voter i.d. and the talk of separation is so much in the year if there might not be very substantial number of people and putting in the jurisdiction where you didn't need to show the total ied to stay away and therefore looking at the professional stuff doesn't capture that. >> i think it's possible. i think it is unlikely based upon the data that we have that exists. for instance, the problem is there are surveys of nonvoters that have been done. the problem is finding the causation between the lack of a photo id and not going to cast a ballot because people will say

well i didn't vote because i didn't have an idea but i also wasn't registered. so is that a person who isn't voting because they were not registered or voting because they didn't have an id? but even -- even if you give them the menu, like tuna, the weather was bad, they didn't like the candidates, only about, i don't know, 7% of nonvoters say a lack of i.t. at least in indiana, this was the case in 2008 only about 7% of the voters say that was one of the many possible issues that they have, so i suspect that there are not that many folks who are out there. there was so much as currencies and so much coverage on both sides repeating charges of bipartisan toadeater voter fraud or voter suppression that you

have to think it entered the public consciousness and perhaps had ann impact on the turnout for the life of me i do not know what direction that was petraeus and attwell, for west virginia and i know that we had a total identification fogle i.t. bill introduced in march, and that did have ramifications. it didn't go anywhere. but there were phone calls, more phone calls than usual in the primary election and especially here because of all of the publicity about the fri law that we were having people say i need to bring a photo id to read so much so that we send a press release out that said no frito i.t. required the folk data verification is required and that's the way that it's been at least for ten years to help america attack. so there were some ramifications just in the air hearing this. >> yeah, i mean ohio was discussed that they had a controversy del foot o id --

photo i.d. law. nothing changed from the previous elections, and where we had some people scratching their heads and asking questions about early voting because early voting in ohio is done the same with aretas by mail or in person. it's the same five fields that's what you do. and we got inundated with calls and i got e-mails and phone calls personally that said supportive elections didn't ask me. they are not doing their jobs. well, with early voting you don't have to present a form of identification. that's only on election day. you write that down so there is a lot of confusion about what the rules are. but if you look at the facts on the voter turnout in ohio, we had a record early vote turnout by 1.8 million, about 100,000

more than in 2008. but our overall turnout when you had it in the election day is about 100,000 less. so it's not for lack of information when you are in ohio, it's a lack of good information that's the problem. >> i just want to make sure why have this right and it's your job to enforce, not to write it. you don't need voter i.t. if you vote early. >> your list of your photo i.d., utility bill, you can use all those things or you can when you are voting early, you write your name, address, date of birth, driver's license number, they will ask for it with your social security number or you can provide one of these 13 additional items in your signature a and a cross check that against the database, and that talks it works in our state. estimates are you voting early at your courthouse or are you

voting early in the different areas. >> or the designated area members. >> in west virginia we have early voting in the courthouse and we also have what is called satellite. so, i am trying to figure out how you do that. how you cannot ask for -- >> because you are using the driver's license number or the last digits of the security number and checking that come and before that envelope is opened the check that against the statewide data base where is your signature excess of the electronic file and where all of that information access on the physical copy of it and then that is the same way if you vote by mail you are not we to leave home to vote in ohio. we have an entire buffet of options for voting and we have built-in safeguards for doing so. >> that discussion just got extremely technical. but there is a point to be made

for how technical that discussion was. who are the people that are going to be implemented the requirement on election day? there are poll workers that work once or twice a year and get paid very little money, and it's tough to be a poll worker, and it's tough with all these rules and the more technical they get, the more mistakes will be made. and i wonder if there is something the just cries out for simplicity in terms of i.t. requirements. and maybe no i.t. requirements because it just adds another layer of complexity to the polling place process that may be we don't need. >> simplicity would be great. but every time we provide some new access, it's accompanied by some new controversy. and i absolutely agree with everything that you say about

the poll workers. but let's take a step further. it's also at our board of elections. we have boards of the elections the federal government wants to do one thing that could help us send more money to buy new machines because our machines are old, our maintenance contracts are wearing out, this was all the local level. how they got us objected to these new expensive machines and now the machines are getting old and there is no federal dollars to replace them, and then by the way, budgets are being cut, it's going from the federal to the state to the local, and so we had -- we had an announcement where the county that was cnn said it could be the most important counties in ohio but if the r word, just laid off a third of their work force. and now the media to come back and replace those folks with temporary workers on the road, but its talent and training and

all of those things that we continue to go on the cheap. we cannot run a world-class election system on the cheap. it's just not possible. you can guess the system to do more and more and more and has fewer resources, older equipment and less trained people. that isn't going to work. the shiny object and the political pundits have an easy time talking about them because it is boring and it is highly technical. but these are the things that matter when you are actually administering the election to the >> let me follow-up and i think this follows on your point something you mentioned in your presentation i think for the first time your office sent out absentee ballot applications to every voter in ohio. was the thinking behind that and what was your bad experience?

>> the thinking behind it was very simple but we didn't want to have the lines on election days of the more people to vote early there is less chance there were when the lines on election day to buy like in the system to a highway. you have in the morning you are going to have a traffic jam and the evening he will have a traffic jam if that is when everybody comes to the vote. so you either build more liens or more highways, and for us we try to expand people to vote during a longer period of time, both from home. that creates, that lessens the chance for lying at the polling locations, standing in line in ohio was an option because you could have voted for home, you didn't need to come anywhere to vote. but even after all of that, in that first morning from the time the polls open until 9:00 there were lines in certain places because that is what people -- that is when people wanted to vote. but we have been trying to push people to early vote in

presidential elections especially because that's when you run the potential for long lines in the polls say you can get by with a number of locations if you have more people voting early >> does voting by mail give rise is very different kind of i.t. requirement? >> it's the same process of voting by mail as it would be voting in person but in the world of no good deed goes unpunished there were people that were saying now everyone can have an absentee ballot with they don't turn it and we will have more provisional ballots on election day. you know, again, coming out of the category of just trying to find a problem that wouldn't exist that wouldn't exist because we ended up having fewer provisional ballots than we did four years from now. >> what do you guys think -- let's go down the room would you think about the idea?

what should an acceptable i.d. bea assuming that you think any his necessary. >> it would be a big picture without being specific which is what we are good at. i think the good i.d. would be what a reasonable business person would accept as an i.t. to do business with somebody. if you actually, you know, wanted to conduct a business transaction with somebody but he wanted to make sure the person that you are conducting the transaction with was who they said they were what would you require of them? and this kind of the way that i would look at it. what a reasonably prudent business person wants to do business. >> and what would you like to see? >> that is a question i won't answer. [laughter] >> i don't know, a credit card. i mean, i can point of a lot of things from my wall let and

wouldn't somebody accept that who wanted to do business with me? mabey a credit card is enough, maybe an atm card is enough. >> now that we have established a generality do you have thoughts about this? >> i will tell you what i proposed in ohio is essentially that look, i don't want to complicate things we have a process that is already in place that allows you to vote without a photo id by mail or in person early. and so we have taken care of the first 34 days. we are down to one. we are down to the election day so what would be acceptable than? what i said is that you can simplify it and use a fogle id whenever they can agree upon. or your name, address, date of birth and a loss for digits of your social security number and your signature which would

prohibit, which would answer the question of suppression, disenfranchisement because everybody can vote under that scenario and that will allow us to cast a ballot without worrying if they forgot their ied, -- i.d., if they didn't have a driver's license, the for example you want to use, that will allow everybody to cast the ballot without being denied the opportunity to do so. but again, i will come back and say that what ever you can get an agreement on within your state is the most important because it is a controversy and you don't want, and you need to have reasonable voice is trying to sort those issues out. >> well, what i presented with what we do obviously has worked because you are showing some form of identification whether you are registering in person where with catwalks so, -- said

that has been quite sufficient. as you can see it's interesting and i'm sure that john and i will talk offline about this because my question of the chemical protection if you don't have to have a variety when you go on the election day that will question. >> you could have either option. [laughter] >> when we talk about what other aspects -- and i am the type of person and you look at some of the initiatives that we have to look to try to find a solution and has this been a question and must virginia with a stamp duty for some thoughts that john has as a process everybody looks and agrees on i think that this process that we have in west

virginia works now there will be some as my opponent countered and there were others in the legislature that would counter, and you are going to see various ideas come to play, and i have even said this, too, i don't stand so strong and hard, but as long as someone is not disenfranchised, as long as there is not any cost to it or arbitrary barriers or unrealistic regulations put on at then you can have these requirements. how can you get to that? i think that the polling books might be an option with a bout with keeping someone's identification with their photo identification with them that has been fought that minnesota before their vote in the recent constitutional amendment took place i know that my friend i just saw he was considering this, too and this is what i've been talking about in west virginia some of our vendors can

you offer these electronic pull books that are going to be able to store the photo or take a picture this a trend that someone doesn't have to go and pay even $5 for a photo i.d. you think $5 for photo i.d. but it's the $10 gasoline money to run here and then a cure to get the of your idea and so right now what i show is working in west virginia and if they are questioned that's why it's a bigger picture it's not a panacea that a photo i.d. will solve all problems. we have to pay the person we have to pay the defense on all of this on every different aspect and we have to stay vigilant with whatever voting system we are using and what ever requirement we have. >> it's a very interesting idea. what do you think? >> i didn't answer the question

before and i'm still a lot -- >> i want to say this, you are asking -- connect you are asking the right question i think because -- [laughter] >> thank you, professor. >> a lot of the the data over the photo i.d. has been and on and off switch. i think maybe the conversation will move in the next few years to the best practices scenario we need to show a photo i.d. for the bout. florida however as a signature matched with their poll workers. what is the best way of achieving the results and they will move in that direction over the next few years rather than this sort of yes and no attention that we've got.

>> and to that point not all of the laws are the same, there are some strict photo laws the recalled photo laws the you don't need to cast a ballot under them, and a lot of them i heard a lot of people say look, the democrats in this state passed a photo i.d. law why don't we do that? >> what's not released well, it is more of a photo i.d. light. and the details matter in this about what it looks like before we get caught up because you're right photo i.d. law, no photo i.d. law. islamic the question you should be asking -- the question you should be asking too as we have a solution to something that we have a problem to go with this solution.

>> statistics will say we don't have the problem for some solutions we think we have. estimate is close to the consensus of the in person voter fraud by in person nation may be a problem that doesn't exist but let me have the audience ask some questions and there are microphones if you wouldn't mind coming up. sure. >> there's a lot of debate but not fax of the impact. >> i'm sorry to interrupt you but we don't have a lot of time so let's keep the questions nice and clich. >> there's a lot of debate but not the fact of the impact of the photo i.d. but about having the 29 registration date deadline. do we think technology is changed enough and practices have changed enough that we can get rid of that 29 day deadline because the bus stop a lot of people from the belt.

[laughter] >> you are doing as good a job as i was. [laughter] >> i agree. i want to talk to the election administrators and how they are doing this because we still have to deal with paper. but i thought that as some point the registration requirement would be declared unconstitutional. it's not going to happen tomorrow but may be ten or 15 years from now it may be because we will be able to do the same day registration for everybody everywhere. >> look, we have the same day registration and ohio for five days of our early voting period. and there are examples of people who are registering. it's currently being investigated and addresses that are in the vacant homes and they are registering their and their voting and having their ballots counted. i think that when you get into the same day registration in the voting i can tell you in a swing

state that it is highly competitive that that is a place that you will run into fraud. we are already running into it, and it is a problem. >> 21 days out the clerks will tell you that the need that amount of time. the ongoing debate putative >> we catch it because it is 35 days before the election but if you do it on election day did you have a problem because you are going to hold up the result as we are going to collect and check against all of those issues because they are legitimate problems and maybe 30 days is too long but i don't see deutsch and rett on election day without some chance to back up and take a look at those before election day. >> use of this question is for you. i'm part of that team that suit you in ohio. [laughter] >> finally face-to-face putative [laughter]

>> i agree that the details are what matter on this. so i just a question for you. why in your so-called balanced deal did you try to eliminate the 35 days that you now herald, and why did you go so far as to try to end the last days of the early voting as you can get all the way to the supreme court? >> first of all i do not herald the 35 days. that's what it is. i think that the period shorter than 30 days and you don't register and vote on the same day would be a good reform in ohio. i don't know the difference between 20 to 35 days should cause anybody problems. i think my condition on that proposal was 28 days that we would have an early voting. the last three days was a bipartisan recommendation that came from a bipartisan group of election officials that said if we are going to have all of this early voting, we are going to have millions of ballots in the process of being sent and returned, we need some time to make -- to synchronize the

voting rules, so we know who voted and who didn't on election day. whether that needs to be three days or not, probably doesn't need to be that long, but that's what they asked for and that's what the legislature voted for in their bill. and they voted unanimously on a bipartisan process. i just have to defend the law that they passed. by the end of the election process, you know, whatever. [laughter] >> i just want to run an election, you tell me what the rules are and let's not fight about of rules all the way until the election. >> yes, sir. >> a lot of fighting through florida by the way. question that i have for ohio and west virginia do you have the real i.d. in your state? >> yes, in west virginia we are the first states to start implementing that. >> florida is a real i.d. stadium for those of you that don't have real i.d. that can't be fun particularly on the female voters when they get a driver's license you have to

show with your cord record and showing if your name was changed before marriage that is required under real i.d.. men have no such problem. the issue is this issue of -- >> maybe same-sex marriage will change that. [laughter] >> what is the model law if we can arrive at that because florida has no match, no vote at the front end. you are not eligible to be registered unless you are voter registration database and if you match up with the department of corrections and you are not a felon coming to match up with the highway safety, you have a valid driver's license that matches and weaker lottery corporate the last four digits of your social security number and pass that and you were allowed to be registered. that's how florida allows for an individual that has no i.t. to compare it to the database to confirm that this is the same signature that we have cleared

ten years ago and now we know you are in fact eligible to read this is a whole sort of different model than depending upon the picture i.d. on election day is taking before we put you on the role to confirm you are eligible to be of voter. that should be part of the discussion as well it seems to me. >> with the lawyers committee my question is for the secretary husted on uniformity. a lot of the conversation of last couple years focused on uniformity. and i agree with you on the premise of the uniformity that we disagree on what the definition actually is. the problem that we saw was this drive to the uniformity of the process of the black-and-white. one early vote mailing of the absentee ballots resulted in the young uniformed access and ability to vote for certain voters. we know that in cuyahoga county three-quarters of the early person of votes in 2008 and of what happened in 2012 passed by

the communities of color. the male vote for used by the white voters so in persuading the window without, but you're not, not maintaining the male vote window had this fortunate impact on certain communities, so that wasn't uniform. we know that the number of the voters in the urban county are significantly higher than the rural county comes a limiting -- >> i don't agree with your conclusions, first of all. you asked a question about uniformity to it i just want to make sure the rules are the same so that betty jones who is voting in one county has the access to the ballot as well as the betty jones voting in another county in ohio. it isn't accessed by county, it is about voter. with access to is that voter have and so for the first time in ohio history we have uniform rules and loss said that every single voter is created equally. for those that don't know how it used to work, the county's use to set their own days and our press and some counties, some voters got absentee about requests and some didn't.

i said everybody should be treated the same tree all of the county's come every registered voter, active registered voter should receive an absentee ballot request to read the days and the hours and all the counties should be the same so that the voter, the individual voter has the same access within every county. that's what we had to read and i believe that is what we should have in any election system. islamic of the rules were different from 5,000 it than to four injured 50,000 the rules are different because the number of the voters going into one location are drastically different -- >> and they have an ample number of machines that can use to accommodate that or they can move to a new site that's even bigger than and accommodates all of that. it's just as hard for a rural voter who lives a long way from their county seat and doesn't have access to public transportation whether they are in a small county or not to get there and cast a vote is as it is for any voter in an urban

county that has public transportation and has an ample -- has a number of ways they can get -- >> one more question. >> might be a good follow-up to the question. my question is from the second time we've heard from the states today because the voters i.d. impacts the minority of people it isn't something to be terribly concerned about and the only statistic is 7% of people named as a factor in the turning them to vote and what passed it very quickly. so equating that it is a scary small number with not being something to be concerned about when we know the margin of the election was the last time someone won an election by far more than seven points i'm just interested in hearing people's perspective on, julca small versus important and then the other thing is i go to work on the pennsylvania voter i.d. case about the experience that they were having in testified in the

case of the stories are heralding about people because they didn't want to have to use it or people that got sent in a wheelchair is to treat different locations because the people on each place didn't know where they were going, veterans who showed up with their i.d. waited for hours and people that miss spellings we did with their child for two or three hours side asking about implementation. it's a question of small versus important and second coming even if we believe that they are correct and that we should have them, can we implement them in a way that is fair? >> i will take the first one. i think you can look at the numbers that are generated from the primary elections and get numbers about 5,000 folks not being double to cast the accountable belt because they backed the i.d. dividing you can look at those numbers and you can say that against the amount of the in person voter fraud shouldn't have i.d. laws they

don't prove that the fee i.d. matters. >> join me in thanking to this terrific panel. it's been a discussion on voting in america and problems on the election day and putting new state laws along the lines. speakers include obama campaign national directors jeremy boyte at a city election day problems were unacceptable. the discussion was part of a daylong conference hosted by the pew center and it's about an hour. thanks. i want to introduce the next panel. we came to this after the election after all of the talk about what went on on the election day and solve the problems we saw and of course the media picked up on and drove it out of the narrative after each election day we wanted to

get experts appear to talk about what was going on in the field who really knew what was going on in the field in the days leading up to the election day so if that i will just introduced a moderator of the session that we are very lucky to have eliza newlin carney from ceq mccaul. islamic thank you. i want to thank you for having this event and all of you for coming today. we have a very distinguished panel that we are to talk about the experience of the voters on election day. pitcher me bird is a veteran of barack obama's reelection campaign and was national director of obama for america and the recent election. he was national deputy director of organizing for america, the group set up to build a grass-roots support for the policy initiatives. he's one of the architects of the presidency and a digital driven team organizing model. eric marshall is in the protection movement and he's been in the trenches of the voter access in the state and national level. he's the manager of the legalization at the lawyer's committee for civil rights under

law. and he is also the coup leader of the election protection, the nation's largest voter support collection. scott tranter is in the conservative david and technology consulting firm and he too has been in the trenches of the modern has an election they were all wendi lector in the campaigns he advised senator john mccain presidential campaign in 2008, and in the most recent election at first national public committee on recount preparation and he's also been an adviser to mitt romney's presidential campaign. i'm going to ask each one of the panelists one question and then have a more general discussion and then open up to questions from you. so, eric, why don't you start and talk about what went right and what went wrong on election day 2012 from the perspective of the voters trying to cast a ballot. semidey mant the address the question that will make the unpopular in this room. i will start about what went right. what went right is people voted

in high numbers across the country saw, you know, huge turnouts in the seats across the country. we saw a share of the electorate among the african-american and latino voters. and the past election was great to see the electorate to be more diverse and look more like what america is. i thought was great. we saw the results of the american voters as what went wrong and what went right and people in line for seven hours. the seven hour lines were wrong but the fact that people were so passionate that they waited in in line for seven hours and voters in florida, even though president obama was already in the state of chicago to give the victory speech didn't leave the line because their vote matter and they wanted to make sure that was cast and there was a great thing we should be celebrating. also, we saw the state that enacted certain reforms that didn't have as many problems on election day. north carolina, they have one-stop voting and same-day registration, during the early voting you can register at the

same time. ..

that went wrong. >> we'll come basketball to that. >> and it's interesting, talking about how the concentration of long lines in densely populated urban areas and impacted voters. we're very concerned about

seeing african-american voters greatly higher level impacted by lines and a state like ohio, there were attempts to, in the name of uniformity, restrict the ability of people to vote early, on the weekends and evening hours there were counties who had taken steps previously to -- take steps steps steps to minim. if you're a rural county, your lines will be shorter. there might be different options to meet the needs of voters. we saw in florida, where there were long lines, except people voting at 2:00 in the morning because you limited the hours during early voting, creating longer lines and confusion, chaos, at some occasions for the early vote. we saw people outside the library in miami-dade until

1:00 in the morning. >> how did 2012 differ from 2008? we heard about long lines in 2008. why did this generate so much attention, including from the president himself? he said we have to fix it. >> well, first of all, thanks for having me here and having this conversation. as somebody who has been now in both the presidents campaigns, in the field fighting against these laws that were put into place, it's deeply personal to me and watching folks fight to stay in those lines and make sure their vote was cast is inspirational, but what we saw in 2012 is unacceptable. it's unacceptable. fred mcdonald is here -- we had 59% participation among folks that were eligible. some of the data is still coming in. frankly a lot of the data out, the opportunityout being up but i'm not satisfied with 59%

participation. i think a lot of the people in this room are not satisfied with that either. what we saw in 2012 that was different from 2008, there were a lot of partisan laws put into place that were not helpful in terms of increasing access or integrity. cutting days to rote in florida was not about anything but making it hard are for people to vote. let's call it what is it, the florida gaap chair said that's exactly what it was. it was put in place to make it harder for democratic voters to turn out. we saw the leader of the house in pennsylvania say that the photo i.d. law would help mitt romney in the state of pennsylvania. so the difference in the states in 2008 and 2012 is that it was a blatant partisan attempt, often times to change the rules of the election very close to the election to cause confusion in places even where those laws

didn't go into effect for this election but might in the future. and so that was, i think, the biggest difference and potentially why so much was covered, but it was seen as a partisan ploy to change the election. what we also saw on a positive note -- they're a lot of folks in this room that have been doing this for a number of years -- what we saw in 2008 and 2012 are tens of thousands of election officials at the local level who just want to do their job and do their job very well. we also -- and did it very well. we also saw in the courts -- we saw judges and courts who really took their job seriously and did a thorough investigation of these laws. so i think there was some very positive things and groups that worked to make sure we could -- our campaign was one of them. the difference was the partisan nature of these laws, put into effect after the 2010 election that were designed to make it more difficult for people to vote. that was not seen in 2008 and that's why you have more people

paying attention in 2012 because of the ropes for the lines. and the lines were longer, and when you have the same number of people voting in these states that voted in 2008 with fewer days, the lines are going to be longer and it did not feel like on the grout there was enough effort to get the right resources in the hand of the officials at the local level. i could talk more about the staffing level but i'll come back to that later. >> scott, what were lessons complained can you see any solution on the table that might bring bipartisan support? >> just to echo jeremy, there's a lot of -- the elections officials are underprepared for the job. if you have ever been to a polling location, ask the person who is processing your vote or imagining, how much they got paid, got trained, how long

they're doing it, why they're there 1-14 hours a day. i respectfully disagree with you why the lines are longer but we can all agree that election officials need to be better prepared and spend more resources to make sure people can vote and don't have to wait in lines until 1:00 a.m. as far as bipartisan going forward, a lot of these things -- everyone can argue with the law and argue about the regulation. at least what campaigns can do on a collaborative basis, work together to make sure the election officials are reporting correctly, time, location, papers, whatever is required, which i know happened in massachusetts. i know it happened in a couple of congressional races in california when there was a -- bilingual ballots and any campaign i'm on i try to make

sure those things are work out. i don't pull out any hope there's going to be any great grand bipartisan agreement on voter i.d. laws or internet voting or whatever to alleve these problems. a lot of us are campaign professionals and want to do help our side and some thing it's photo i.d.es or longer lines. >> but you are identifying resources to those running the election is an important touchstone and that's not somewhere we are yet. >> absolutely. the first job i ever had in politics was $40 to go watch a polling location in my home town of orange county, california. 16 years old, didn't vote, didn't know anything about it. somebody was going to give me $40 to watch it. i was sitting in someone's garage and the guy had gotten up at 4 al, took apart four voting booths location, three worked, one didn't. the precinct, about 800

registered voters and i thought to miss, only three booths? at that time i thought everyone voted. just the resources and people do it and, again to echo what jeremy was say, people who do this are truly 99.99% of them are doing it for the right reasons and they're just overworked and underprepared for what is going forward. and then you throw in things like sandy and natural disasters and it's hard to prepare for that. >> that's another one. all three of you were on the ground on election day. i was on the ground. we did a story on people monitoring the polls. what were the most surprising or possibly disturbing things you saw on election day itself? >> first of all, we're a nonpartisan organization so we're not on either side of the aisle. we're just making sure american voters can vote, and that's something people from all political parties should support. one of the great american values is the right to vote and

whoeverrorrer voting for, if you disagree, you should vote. everyone should hold that ideal and working in a system where you're eligible and can vote, you're able to you heard among all three of us that kind of -- i hope we can come to a consensus on that. something that was somewhat surprising to us but wasn't really -- and i think it's disturbing -- is that a lot of the same problems we have seen in past elections we saw this year. there was a lot of conversation about voter i.d. a lot of conversation about challenging, intimidation, or things the media wants to jump on, and there were some problems but what we saw by and large is things we have seen every election cycle, things we haven't taken steps to address. dave talk about paper being on registration, a problem how we register voters and it's inspecting every part of the -- and most administrators in this room would agree with the time and the money and the expert the resources it takes the way we

register voters now is a problem. down the chain you would have more money to spend on workers. you would have more time to train workers if you were not processing paperwork. you would be able to do effective voter education and so until we address that, that systemic issue, they can you're going to continue to see things over and over again. you know, if you want to -- something that is a little bit kind of absurd situation, in galveston, texas, there were 39 polling places that opened in the afternoon because they didn't give enough time to turn the machines on and let them warm up and the judge had to extend polling place hours. so simple things that impact voters in an area. that was something that was surprising to us. or the high number of provisional ballots where they didn't have the right registration information.

then you had, especially in predominantly african-american precincts, voters who were showg up and they were given provisional ballots. and there were so many provisional ballots, there were some voter had to walk away. and that shouldn't happen in this country. >> a great example. >> we had a great voter protection team headed by bill bauer and court in the, and we had a good system to track. so just break down what we saw on election day. 32% of the issues we saw were related to ballot shortages and capacity issues. basically lack of resources. about 20% were -- came from the overuse of provisional ballots. we were seeing this over and over again. voter should not be given provisional ballots but were. a lot was training, a lot misunderstanding, 15% of the

problems were site issues. you know, machine problem, polls opening late, different issues with the actual site, and then rest had to do with challenge issues, a bunch of other things. so we were seeing issues here and there, and we don't just see election day anymore as election day. we see it as early voting time so a lot of these we saw leading up to election day and thankfully in a lot of states that have early vote we werable to address those issues far in advance, which is one big benefit of early voting. you can see when poll workers are misinterpreting the law and requiring voters to show an concern when they didn't need to. that is what we were seeing on election day. we clearly saw an increased level of turnout and we saw long lines, which sort of caused a lot of these issues we just talked about here, what caused those long lines. those are the breakdown of what we saw. nothing was surprising to me because we have been doing this for a while. because we saw a lot of these

things in early vote. the length of the lines in florida, for example, in early vote, did not make us -- therefore, we're not surprised by the length of the lines we saw on election day in florida. i think the number one thing was the ballot shortages. we have a great team over here, andrew and tim here from our analytic team. if anybody wanted to know what we thought the turnout would be at their location, we could have told. the the stuff was not that complicated. they were underprepared and underpresourced with the number of ballots, for example, which is unacceptable you can do the math. there's ways to address that on the front end. we should not have been having these problem wes had in these states which caused long lines. and it goes back to a lack of resources, lack of training, and some cases back to the fact that laws are put in place that made it harder for people to vote early, which, therefore, made -- had more people voting on election day and a lot of these places which caused longer lines.

>> we have a pretty good idea how many people actually showed up, pretty good at it. it amazes me when these state officials don't necessarily -- surprised when 50% of an 800% registered pre synch shows up and they only have ten provisional ballots. i don't understand why they don't prepare better. i don't think any campaign, especially on a bipartisan standpoint, would be willing to share that information to have an idea how many people are going to show up and that should happen going forward, we saw a lot of the same things from -- i wasn't looking at the same stuff jeremy was looking at. bat'll shortages. underprepared or ill-prepared, misprepared election officials. the other thing that generally speaking, i'm sure we saw more of -- i hesitate to call it this but voter intimidation, a lot of overzealous people at the

150-foot line and it's both sides. i'm sure as a conservative republican you'll hear me say there's a lot of union members who like to be there and on the republican side there's a lot of overzellous supporters on our side. i think that alone brings different dimensions to voting locations. not eave state or every polling location but definitely something we hear voters say i don't feel comfortable walking past or walking in or whatever that is, and that shouldn't be the case for anybody. i don't think it's -- it's not a massive problem. not in the double digit percentages. but nieminen feels -- anytime anyone feels intimidate, that's wrong. >> i know we're going to go back and forth on the -- one step that comes back to me is there's roughly -- closed the books in florida but roughly 300,000 more voters this time than in 2008. 6200 precincts, 5300 polling

locations. clearly less early vote day. but even these polling locations -- they're not jam packed 12 hours a day. i do agree that the lines are longer. i just don't necessarily think that it was because of regulations or because of someone trying to nefariously suppress the vote. i think it was literalie just underprepared officials and not enough people working. that comes down the county level. when that heaped at miami-dade, a lot of republican city council that is not pushing the funds over, something they can handle at the county level and at least from a bipartisan standpoint everyone agreed would need more research. as far as how many days we vote for me to decide but that could happen a lot of these issues. >> just say on that, i disagree with you on a lot of what you said. die think that -- [laughter] >> potentially.

maybe i just step back. it's 2012 in the united states of america. unacceptable to have people voting after midnight ever. so, whether at it more people would be able to vote or not, even if it was the same number of people, it's unseasonable. we need to do every -- it's unacceptable with need to do everything we can could avoid that, everything. and not does not mean you cult the number of days and hours that people can vote, or in ohio's case, to cut the weekend out of early vote to spend millions of dollars, millions, of your taxpayer dollars to fight to stop the last three dives early vote and take it all the way to the supreme court of the united states does not help lines. we know that. that does not make lines shorter or make it more acceptable for voters. we know that. everybody in this room knows that. cutting the number of days is not helpful. so we should do everything we can and part of it is number of days and hours. but i agree part of it is also knowing how many people are going to vote there and having

the number of booths you need to have, the number of backup ballots if machines go down, the number of provisional ballots. so there's a lot of things that aren't about the laws. so i agree it's two pieces but it's definitely not helpful to send a message to folks we're going to cut your hours hours at out the sunday before, things that are clearly partisan attempts and were directed and you see it afterwards as people have been talking about. somebody said earlier the headline out of hoe first session today should be don't vote early in the day. don't vote early the the day. the headlines should be we need to fix the system so keep can vote whenever they want and not have to stand in line. not that people should have a different time to vote. the headline is we need to fix the system with boater laws. >> i'd like to come back the lines and the early vote questions. there's a number of things we

can talk about. i want to jump to voter i.d. which is another controversial item, and this is speculation how much this affected voter participation. what do we know about whether i.d. laws or the confusion around them actually prevented people from vote or, conversely, possibly stimulated them to vote more because they were intimidated or angry about these laws. >> i mean, we definitely saw a lot of confusion about voterty. i talked about pennsylvania. that is one example. something we saw -- and it's hard to totally quantify who stays home because of voter i.d. there is an impact on people who hear something, get a call, get a mailer that says photo i.d.es are required and they don't have if. things we did here in the election, we're confused. talk about pennsylvania. in ohio we got reports of poll worker who weren't applying the

photo i.d. -- the i.d. requirement properly. so, if you have a photo i.d., a driver's license, the address doesn't have to match. utility bill address has to match and we got reports of voters being -- having their driver's license rejected because the address didn't match. in michigan, if you don't have photo i.d., you still should be able to vote if you sign an david -- affidavit attesting you're the person. that's not an option that is often given to the vote, and even if the voter asks for it, there's resistance. so we had a number of problems with that. virginia there was confusion with people around i.d. because you have a new law that went into effect where you had multiple forms of i.d. we got reports of people were being told they had to show a photo i.d. so, in texas, during early vote

there was confusion about the i.d. requirement. didn't get as much of that on election day in texas. we didn't hear as many reports in south carolina to be hospital about been cows about i.d.es that we thought we would. so it was mixed. it affect the entire progression because it created confusion about what was required to vote and what wasn't. that was definitely an impact we saw. >> i think we might not agree on this one but maybe. >> yeah. i guess at least from the voter i.d. stuff, anything we can do to make sure to minimize voter fraud is better. that being said, we all have anecdotal stories about being bad, good, not effective. i'd love to see an actual study telling me something conclusive. an neck dote tall evidence all around, and i don't discount those. i read a lot of those same reports. just the end of the day we're trying to make voting easier, as

well as maintaining integrity of the vote. so anything we can do along those lines should be doesn't voter i.d. its something that should be implemented. i think it's been implemented effectively. perfectly? no. but effectively in many states. i could be proven wrong by a study but i'd like to see one and see how it plays out. >> i think a couple of things on this. we actually probably agree on some of these things here. number one is, the problem in this election with photo i.d. is states were trying to jam it through three months before the election, you don't try too do that unless it's for bipartisan -- partisan gain, and that's they problem. you can't jam through legislation. everybody knows this -- pennsylvania is a great case study how that doesn't work because people are confused, because of local officials are not able to do a good enough job of getting accessible and free i.d.es to everybody who doesn't have them. until a state can say they have a system in place to get free and accessible i.d.es to

everybody who doesn't happen have them, photo i.d.es should not be put in place. if they have that and can guarantee anybody who doesn't have a photo i.d. they have way for them to get a free i.d. without having to go -- drive somewhere to get it, then we do want to talk them to about that. that's common sense. in addition to what should happen bipartisan, say, okay, we would bee -- i think a lot love democrats would be willing to say in states without photo i.d., we want to talk about that as long as it's free and accessible and in addition we do other things that make the voting process more acceptable. because we are interested in having integrity in the system and no one on our side takes that -- it's not a joke. we take it very seriously. and when we saw the secretary of state in nevada prosecute somebody for trying to vote twice, we applauded that. and when the officials in virginia cracked down on the republican firm that was committing fraud with

registration, we applauded that because we think there should be integrity in the system but what can't happen is two or three or four months before an election you put in place laws regarding photo i.d. and people don't have access. so if we're going this route you have to have in exchange for that, more days of early voting, more hours, what thinks to make it more axisible. i think there is bipartisan solutions there but what we can't have it photo i.d. that tries to get jammed through in the last minute. >> we could probably go for house but there are studies show the the reason behind i.d. laws are nonexist ten. the rate of voter impersonation fraud are almost nonexist end, .000 .000 7%. so you look at the studies that pew put fourth that one in four americans who are eligible are

not registered. we're not attacking the problem. i of you want integrity in eleaks and accessibility, let's attack the problem. the problem is how we register voteres, not people going from polling place to polling place. the statistics and the studies over and over again have showed that's not true. but we have studies that show what the problem is so why not address that? and i said before, 2012 is a repeat of 2008 because instead of addressing the root causes of the problems in the elections in 2008, we went in the wrong direction and i.d., this whole debate about politicians choosing specific forms of i.d. not just broad range, to identify yourself and vote. very limited. took us in the wrong direction, and e distracted us on the real problem. and that's where you'll fined the bipartisan consent. >> on the voter registration front, we saw multiple states

put laws in place in 2010, that mate it harder to vote. there's no remarks really in wisconsin, if you want to register a voter, which is one of the mostest most paste trot trick things you can do, you should have to register in all 1,800 municipalities. there's no re reason for that. that doesn't make our elections -- there is know reason you should do that. the only reason to do that is republicans wanted to make it harder for us to do voter registration, and it was a partisan thing wimp saw the same thing in florida. with governor scott. they tried to put laws in place, later thrown out by the court, that maded harder to register voter. we should make it easier. there are great states that made it easier to ridge city and i applaud nevada and the states, like colorado, the they have to work on their web site. if you let somebody register online, you have to make the web site usable for folks.

ohio, for example, you could go on and change your information but it as easier to get your license. and there were people on the panel that would help secretary of states do that pro-bono. so i think we have to make it easier for people to register to vote and stop putting laws in place to make it more difficult. it should be basic right we should be encouraging as opposed to discouraging. and those laws were put in place for partisan reasons. >> it's an emotional issue with strong feelings on both sides and we'll come back to this during the questiones. one reason i want to switch now just to talk briefly about hurricane sandy, i'd like to know what you think the lessons, if any, that were learn from the hurricane sandy experience were, a., because i think it's likely we'll have more weather extremes, and, the second thing is, are there things we can learn from this about innovative ways to direct voters to polling places? i think there's some states already doing kiosks where you

can go and regardless of where you live you can vote in that locale. was there anything useful we could take away from hurricane sandy? >> that would have been a great question for the previous panel. it was major problem. just can't imagine the level of stress and how much work they had to go through, and i applaud them for the heroic efforts they did to put any kind of election in place on those days. and yet it's -- you have polling locations, you have webses that have the polling locations. it's loaded in advance and then a week before, every single polling place is thrown out. how do you notify people? it showed that was an issue. we death did get call -- we did get calls from people who said i went to the secretary of state's web site and they told me to go to a place and it was underwater. so we were on the phone with them trying to help them, and we

had tone up two call centers to take calls. 128% increase in calls on hour hotline because of hurricane sandy. the system that works in a normal time didn't in terms of how people -- especially when you hatt had emergency changes to polling places, clearly better emergency prepareds in can but the states were hamstrung by the law. in those states almost every voter had to vote on election day. no early voting in new jersey and new york, the states hardest hit so you had the week before, in other states you might have -- in north carolina significant number of the electorate already voted. so in both states ex-if if you cast a provisional ballot, it doesn't count at all. fortunately the state at the last minute had executive orders that opened that up. but how much education they were able get to out when people were just trying to unbury their

lives and didn't have electricity and power. so allowing people who cast provisional ballots would have provided more flexibility, understanding ahead of time so people knew they could have gone to another precinct and voted and haste count. we want people to have their ballots counted but it wasn't able to get back to that location, so look at ways to expand the ability of people to vote and other options. expanding the way you vote permanently and looking how you inform people about the polling locations and ways -- text-messaging, or other -- that clearly broke down. >> for me, the problem with the electoral college. my job is to get us 270 electoral votes and spend tomorrow with battle ground states so we didn't deal as much with sandy. i think that, to be honest, i do

think there are a lot of things we can learn and what we did on the campaign -- there's text messaging being one example. how can we at the state level figure out multiple pathways and multiple pieces of technology to get information out to voters much more quickly, with much more of the kind of new technology that would individualize information for folks based on where they live and send them to web sites that are easy to maneuver and easy to get around or a way for them to do it on their mobile devices. and i think we should be ready for that in the future, and have those systems in place and have that ready in all states moving forward and there's some really good lessons out of this. [inaudible] >> do you have any thoughts on that? >> i agree with jeremy. unfortunately we didn't spend as much time in those states. problems similar reasons, electoral college.

i say i know we're cautiously optimistic about the technology allowing the vote and why cautiously optimistic putting anything new in the system instead of trying to game it. anything that could be done to maintain integrity of the vote. it's hard to plan for something like sandy. you hope it never happens again, especially around an election. i don't know how it could have been -- wasn't handled great. i don't know how it could have been handled better given the circumstances and i don't know how states can prepare thinks to handle those things in the future and there's only so much campaigns can do. you can only take them the poll and if they're not at the polling location because of a natural disaster, hard to remedy that. i don't have a good answer for that. i just know it's going to happen again, unfortunately, and campaigns should be prepared for stuff like that and technology can help alleviate those problems. >> sound like a broken record. still processing registration

forms in hoboken. so registration reform hit on that issue. they were still working through the registration process when the storm hit. so that's another issue. >> definitely goes back to registration-which we can -- i think it goes to communication with voters. some voters didn't know that if they went to one of these central places, they would only be able to vote for the top of the ticket. so, i have questions about i have a feeling we have many questions in the audience. let's open it up to audience questions and see what others would like to ask. >> who has questions? >> john forcier. especially for jeremy but for the whole panel you. mentioned one of the big reasons, complaints people had about election day was improperly given provisional ballots. do you have more breakdown on what the reasons were or the biggest problem?

we're extending the use of absentee ballots in legal ways and they're also not necessarily getting people that information. so what were the biggers issues in that area? >> that's a good question. i'm not going govern you the best answer because we're still analyzing this. we had this online system for all of our election observers and the folks that were protecting the vote to put in information. so, we categorize them by type but we haven't gotton to the second level but we're processing that and will be happy to share it with folks. most of it was a false understanding of what sneadded to vote. election officials thinking folks had to have i.d. in states where they didn't misreading the law. basic pieces where the folk -- people should have been allowed to vote. it's just a provisional ballot. you see it as the numbers come back in, in ohio, where there were a number of provisional

ballots, a majority of those were democratic voters in urban areas and places where there were longer lines and that sort of thing. so we've got to analyze to give you a better abc but we'll make that available and that can be helpful. what are the things we can stop. whether it's been training and doing a better job educating voters about what they should bring just to avoid that kind of thing. >> i think the people in this room could answer that question better than the panel. you had in ohio and in arizona and virginia and florida, a lot of provisional ballots cast that people were in the absentee votes and showed up on election day and they had to cast the provisional ballot. voters on the precinct rolls and poll workers who were under stress fell back on the provisional ballot instead of going through the steps in tampa there was an issue that the line the poll workers had were

overwhelmed. and voters were not showing up and the poll worker's not able to verify the information. so voters showed up absentee but myriad reasons. >> machines going down and pipe going to -- people going to provisional, actual paper ballots. >> i wonder, jeremy and others, as came pains get better at getting volunteers and obviously volunteers were core to the campaign -- do you know what impact that has on people who were pole workers, we have a bias -- [inaudible] >> we actually told our states relatively early on that if we were -- if folks were volunteering -- this is different than our approach which is if folks are traditionally volunteering as poll workers we prefer that. because of this issue and campaigns can be hard about this, how do they help get folks

to go, help with the elections as opposed to just going out and getting people to go because if you don't have both, you're going to have problems. we encouraged folkses in 2012, if they had traditionally been poll observers or volunteers for the county to go do that because we thought that was important. now, we had the fortunate situation where we had enough volunteers to do what we needed to do on the campaign side. i think campaigns should think long and hard, particularly campaigns where they're concerned about the administration of the election and make sure there's as many volunteers as possible. so i would tell campaigns in the future, look at that, because it's really important there are enough volunteers helping the election officials. the one problem with that is sometimes they're partisan interests that -- we have seen poll works, the part controls

poll workers, we saw poll workers who were requiring i.d. when it shouldn't be. or we had reports in some places said only obama voters in this polling place. it wasn't just a republican issue. we had issues from democratic workers. so we do need to encourage more people to be poll workers but we need to be careful that the poll worker does not become a bipartisan strategist. >> i'm sorry to butt in. have a volunteer who could theoretically work for them for 12 hours on election day or work at a polling location. i've seen it go both ways each naomi field staffer but i encourage those people to put it in there. it's interesting that, again, -- i was surprised when i learned that just needed to be more -- i say this knowing it probably can't be changed but i think 6200 precincts in florida, 6300

polling locations, open for 12 hours multiple days and sometimes these people get 40 or $50, so if you've do that you're truly serving your country because sitting in those places in october is not a fun thing to do. so anything to direct more resources towards that. campaigns are going to split. some of them are going to let their people go, some aren't. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> depends on how you ask the question. if you ask the question, should

peep happen photo i.d. in order to vote? yes. if you ask the question, should a state implement a photo i.d. law four months before the election and not make it accessible to everyone and free, people don't support that. voters are smarter than that. it's about what you talk about in addition to kind of the macro question, which actually what does this look like in practice if people don't sport it in practice, it doesn't look like it's fair and they do if they think it's fair. >> we had debrief with some of the nonpartisan folks on the c3 side that organized again a ballot initiative in minnesota, and say said they noted on the phone banking that even voters who said, voter fraud is a problem see, crack down on it. they were able get to them to vote against the any initiative on a cost issue and the fact it could create long lines and create more problems in the election problems that most

minnesotans are proud of. they said that's wrong, because while voter fraud is a concern, it's not as big a concern of how much money it costs. so the longer conversation they had to explain she process exit was interesting, we did a study, the lawyers committee in mississippi because the last election, 2011 was about an issue that passed overwhelmingly in mississippi. but you look at the underlying numbers it was over 74% of african-american voters voted against the ballot initiative. it passed 67% of the vote. 74% vote against it. so showed the people who understand the impact about any campaign. no real vote no campaign and they understood the impact it had. so you have to look beyond the survey numbers when people understand the impact. they tend to express negative view towards the law. >> just real quick. this is about priorities. to spend millions of dollars to put something in place that is solving aen in existent problem,

versus spending millions of dollars to answer lack of resources. that's the question here. why are we spending all this money on photo i.d. to solve a problem that doesn't exist, versus spending millions of dollars to solve something that does exist and that's about priorities. >> we may be able to find some common ground around registration. fundmentally, identity ties to registration and the rolls are messed up. so that might go a lock way to fixing the problems. we're going to have a second one on this side. >> earlier on, wendy underhill. earlier on you talked about new jersey, and i'm not sure you know that we have the state election detector from new -- director from new jersey sear, so if you have a couple minutes we could ask him to address how he managed the emergency. >> we would welcome that. >> fair elections legal network.

i have a question about provisional balloted. on the minnesota thing, a good deal of the information toward the end of the campaign on the i.d. constitutional amendment had to do with whether if the amendment passed it would have jeopardized their election day registration regime, and it was a very popular process in minnesota. so i just wanted to mention that. on the long lines, on the problems on election day, we all know that provisional ballots are big issue and a lot of people cast provisional ballots because they show up in the wrong place and we know a number of state thursday the past had hat statewide portability, it's one of those things it could be total consensus on. when somebody is registered in the state there's no reason they shouldn't be able to vote if they move, and we know 30% of the population moves every two years. so i wonder whether we can't go back and r.i.p. replicate what in fact florida has had for years until they rolledded bake

last year, statewide portability and where other states have a version that unfortunately requires a professional ballot and then counseling that bat'll when it's checked off against the rolls. so there's no rope those votes have to be provisional. they could be a regular ballot since we all have state wide databases in the state. >> anybody want to comment? >> go ahead. >> i agree. with everything you said, bob. i think that we need more portability in registration and seeking ways we can get that person to a regular ballot. i think that's a problem, the provisional ballot whether it's the poll workers needing better access to database and making sure the election officials have enough phone lines for the poll workers to work with. it seemed to be dave connect when voters show up at improper locations, and then of course the folks say we should be doing

everything we can could count every bullate -- every ballot. there's michigan that prevent someone from verifying the ballot and no reason states should be resisting that. >> i think you're totally right on, this statewide portability issue. that was juan of the most cynical laws i saw passed in 2010 and 2011. it wasn't solving any problem to say you had to reregister when you move and there's no reason you should have to do that. in addition, in early vote, there's no reason we can't systems in place where you can vote anywhere in a county. and in ohio, having early vote with one location per county is not equarterback access to voters when 400,000 voters live in one county and 4,000 voters live in another. that's not equal access, so we need -- i think portability issues about where you register

and -- have to deal with multiple voting, and clark county, and nevada, is a mold. your have different sites, they make it as easy as 'opossible for people to vote. that's the kind of law you should pa pass as opposed to laws in florida which make it more difficult. >> is there anyone with a question right now? we'll continue to keep it open but we can move on. yes? [inaudible conversations] >> put him on the spot. [applause] >> i lost my tie in hurricane sandy. i'm not prepared today to be up here. thank you for the opportunity,

and i want to thank all the election officials around the country for their support. got a lot of calls. reached out to a lot of officials and they were very helpful with our questions and i want to thank pew and the v.i.p. team with assisting us to get the word out. i guess what the gentlemen up here were talking about as far as issue office communication that maybe we should have done a better job of communicating all the directives and everything we got out. the problem was there was no power, so whether it's getting online or watching the news, we were conducting meetings with state election officials in their car so they could charge their phones on their car chargers and that was the only way to communicate. so, getting the word out was very difficult, and i guess i could ask you guys, if we were a swing state and you had to reach out to your voters there, how

would you have done it differently than we did? [applause] >> that's a great question. for people who have worked on campaigns. >> i mean, look. i was not -- i think i was -- not to criticize because i don't know what you went through and i wasn't there. and i do want to say back to the beginning of what i hope my opening remarks mentioned, you can sit up here and criticize election officials. what i would have don on the campaign side is, number one, we would have figured out from you guys, working very closely and hopefully you had a good relationship built up over time -- >> i'm sure we would have. >> and our folks on the ground would have been folks from there i think would have figured out, how do we communicate to our voters and the way we would have done that, most easily, is using our mail list and text message list in the state to communicate

to those folk0s to say we need you to communicate to other voters using our cal call tool and our text-messaging system, and say, you tell us how the locations are changing because we have to figure out from you where they are, and you tell us the new laws and we'll make sure we communicate that to our voters and volunteers to help communicate it to our voters. but there's no sill silver bullet there. we would have done everything we could and would have probably had the same issues you had. our offices would have been flooded -- >> we tried these. we used reverse 9-1-1 but people had downed phone lines. so everytime you come up with a solution there was another hurt toll get over to get to that. we worked with the utility companies, gave them a list of polling places so they could prioritize where they were going to get power back on. the friday before the election we had hundred polling places without power. so they worked well with us and

once we knew where polling places were not going to open we moved. that's when we started consolidating and bringing them to other locations but we didn't want to do that until we knew there was not going to be power, and then counties -- the state put out a directive they had to go to those old polling places and put signs up to instruct voters where to go. so that was another way, should somebody have gotten wrong information, they could go, seal -- see the sign with the new location and go there so, there were definitely a lot of hurdles to get over, and i said, it was a law of unintended consequences. everytime you fixed one problem it created more. and you can have the best contingency plan in the world but you end up being pro-active. >> i agree mitchell comment wasn't at all a criticism at all. it was explaining the problem wes heard about. what we did with you guys, we

had a hotline in new york and i was in touch with your office all day and we tried to buy some radio time. we had the same problem. we sat down and said, this is hurricane. how do we -- and through the generosity of some fund issues we had money who was focused on making sure that new jersey and new york -- so we tried to figure out how to get the 866, so we bought radio and worked with our partners to get the word out and then if we get calls about a problem, weed work close live with your office, and try to say, where is the location and. and there was great organization. that was our solution. >> i think the other thing we did, we looked at the existing laws we had and expanded those rather than trying to create new laws or new solutions, polical ballot, we allowed never in the state so you could get the

common ballot. president, u.s. senate, state questiones. we got the word on that out as best we could. e-mail voting, for military and overseas voting. we expanded that to allow people in other states, pennsylvania, new york, we were getting hundreds of phone calls, i can't get home. to late for me to get a paper-absentee ballot. what can i do? the quote that hit home the most was, i lost my house, please don't let me lose my right to vote. i mean, that really hit home with us so we did whatever we could to get these people the ability to vote. >> you messenger e-mail. how did that work out? overall good? >> in general -- we're still doing the analysis of how, but at the time, again, being the situation that we're in, that was a tool that we used maybe wouldn't in a normal situation ball it was something that if we didn't do that, there would be

hundreds or thousands of people that would not have been able to vote that day. >> do you think it's something you would consider more institutional going forward? >> i'm not going to comment on that. [laughter] >> i have ten questions i'd like to ask you but thank you so much. >> thank you for the opportunity. [applause] >> one more question? >> my question was actually on new jersey. >> oh, okay. >> what would i -- what i wanted to know was, what were the disruption you experienced and how did your county officials manage them with training? >> there's definitely concern that poll workers might not show up on election day because we didn't know where they may be in the state, if they were

displaced, there was this concern that they may not be coming and may not even be able to get back to their polling place to work. so, counties lined up their backupped and they're alternate poll workers, and then as far as training for some of the changes, they put information into the packets and, again, happening so close to the election, you obviously couldn't hold training classes, so we -- the counties did a phenomenal job in finding polling places and getting poll workers there, but it was a matter of putting stuff in their supplies, additional provisional ballots because we going to allow them to vote anywhere in the state. so with those additional ballots came instructions. so it was not a enough time to do any formal training unfortunately but we got the word out as best we could. >> so, the way we've gone, unfortunately, you're not going to get your last word in but it's been wonderful having you guys. thank you so much. and i do think we have gotten

some interesting points that of commonality introduced which include the notion that campaigns can work with election officials, and it's already happened, and possibly can work more. the idea that some democrats are willing to talk about i.d. anywhere certain circumstances is very interesting. and obviously the ongoing questions around stage which i'm sure will be discussed further in other panels. so, thank you again for coming. [applause] ...

and decided to start the film out of that feeling that the

voices were kind of a bubbling up coming up to the surface to say this isn't something that we can accept any more as a part of our cultured a look at cycles of political change in the u.s. with institute senior fellow james pierson. he discusses the three political revolutions that have set the stage for the new phase of political and economic development in america including thomas jefferson's revolution in 1800, the civil war and the new deal. this is about one hour and ten minutes.

>> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. good evening. i'm president of the american enterprise institute and delighted to welcome you to this evening's bradley electorate entitled the political revolution 1789 come 1858, 1928 and today. it features a friend to many of you when he's also a fellow at the manhattan institute a lot of you have seen his work over the years when. this is an especially important topic today given that many of us believe we are on an inflection point at american politics. it was a lot of you know the circumstances that look remarkable in my view like today and many of your better historians and i am fallujah

seat we had a dog year election and the 1938 economic growth rate was - 3.4%. if i was the year that aei was started in reaction to the policy hurting the american economy and leading to the malaise that structurally was a part of the great depression. was also the belief of the founders of this institution the administration of washington was using the recession and the ongoing depression as the pretext to turn the american public against a free enterprise system and was doing so with the tools of class warfare half. this sounds remarkably similar to today and was the belief of our founders that unless something changed, something big was going to happen and something bad, the american economy and indeed to the american society. as we all know, something was about to happen in 1938 and we certainly hope something like

that isn't about to happen today. we will get a view of tonight's speaker about what the next great revolution will look like in american politics. jim as i said is the president of the science foundation and he's written and edited books for many years on policy and politics. he's been a leading voice in the conservative intellectual movement and a central figure in before lamb preppie in higher education. we are honored to have him here. jim piereson. [applause] >> thanks very much, arthur. it's a great pleasure to be back at aei to renew a friendship that goes back 30 years or more. this is a place where as a younger man my intellectual heroes spend their time, irving kristol, jeane kirkpatrick, walter worms, arthur burns, it's all long list. and i'm delighted to see aei

keeping up the fight. i appreciate the invitation. thank you to karlyn and sandra parker for all of your work in arranging the slides for me. thank you a much. the article appeared in the june issue of the new criteria for. i delivered it as a lecture in last february and at that time i expected and as i said i think it is also in the printed version i felt it likely that barack obama was in the reelection this year, so the kind of theme that i am developing does not depend on their recent election.

i'm not going to speak about barack obama. i changed my mind three or four times over the course of the summer if he would win the election. he got a fair amount of luck in the supreme court decision in the economy that grew at about 3% in the third quarter. it's a figure from an era but even so if the new deal extend in my opinion. each of these upheavals conclude the lasting adjustments that set

the stage for the new phases of the political and economic development in america. the united states could not have developed into a multiracial, multi-ethnic superpower that we know today with the upheavals that facilitated the expansion in the air early 1800's and ended slavery in the 60's and laid the basis for the regulatory entitlement state of the 1930's and 40's. on the on the verge of another of people in the revolution will shape the politics for decades to come? fine said just we are. the question is what revolution or a people will it be? barack obama and the supporters with the election campaign behind them are entitled to the very multi-cultural question has a way of the future and there are demographic trends to support. mr. obama likes to think of himself as a revolutionary

figure on the order of abraham lincoln and franklin delano roosevelt. at the same time there are countervailing forces and the gathering among the voters to bring in the power of the public sector. then there are the irresistible economic and financial realities the u.s. government has already borrowed and the baby boom generation's retiring, the american economy is no longer growing at the rate from decades ago and certainly of the 1950's and 1960's when our major internal at programs or sold in the public and installed. it's hard to see how any new agenda of the government programs will be paid for and indeed it's hard to see how those are already in place and can be paid for. barack obama may represent an era that is ending rather than one that is just beginning.

we find it difficult to imagine a future that might undo our current system because we assumed that the welfare state is a historical destination beyond which there lino for their political possibilities. much hard work and political reform and we have not linked arrived at the history. where have we heard that before? the future can be seen as gradually improving extension of the present state of affairs. the conventional view and for many it is comforting. the assistance has been in place for a long time and there's a tendency to believe the natural, per mendicant are determined. even if the foundations are crumbling nevertheless bear in mind something similar was not there that long ago but other deeply rooted institutions such as the gold standard or the

british empire. then there is the point made by his wonderful book. regions of low probability of disproportionate effect on our lives as he writes almost everything in social life is produced by consequential shocks and jumps to read almost everything studied about social life. we are fortunate to live in the time most changes take place and gradual incremental steps but not always. we know there's been many wise men who were wrong about making projections from current trends. norman royte a war in the european powers. the economist fisher said in 1929 the stocks had reached a permanently high plateau in even john galbraith said the 1980's of the soviet union was the system as stable as the united

states? one wants to avoid any implication to start the goals for stockpiling who can goods and milk. they need not bring down the decline of the civilization or end to america but the opposite they could launch a chapter in the american experiment the we have to go through a difficult path at arriving the destination as americans we are obliged we remain optimistic with pending is a stylish believe could disasters and it presents the past in the case to be made it's grown and prospered and they can do so again. notwithstanding its continuity written in the world's oldest constitution the united states resulted stevens problems and a

relatively brief period and destabilized them, and then to. these are then delete gavankar what are called america's surrogates and revolution because of the red man -- other than the new means. more than of realignment they're fundamentally changes in national regime, regime being defined as law and policy sustained over time in commission supports. people have to supply its that coalition of supporters. there are many reasons. the constitutional system with its dispersed powers resist preemptive and overarching solutions to accumulating problems. hard decisions are finessed, postponed, kicked down the road

as we see today. america's economy and society and bring forward new challenges the system cannot usually respond. at times these challenges have accumulated to a point where the differences between the parties and interests if i resolve them through the established party competition. new institutions must be invented and new collections assembled to address them. that may be a destination. overcome a democratic expansionist regime from 1800 to 1860 when it dissolved in the midst of the slavery and secession crisis. eight republican capital sauna machine for making until 1930

when it was discredited and overthrown by the great depression to read a democratic welfare regime from 1930 to until the president albeit with faltering support after 1980. these regimes were organized around quite different principles of the national development read by and large the achieved and particles from their self and the nation at least for the time. the jefferson checks kim regime promoted democracy, localism and the sense of conflict in france, spain, great britain and mexico. they were found on the issue of slavery in the territory and southern nationalism. when you think about the jefferson-jackson party formation what they had was truly affect.

bottled up along the eastern seaboard and they gained control over course of 50 years of the entire continent, the pacific. there is no possibility is that americans could settle that territory of the time. the the united states gained control of the arizona territory in 1846. it didn't become a state until 1914. the louisiana purchase the would begin to settle it in the 1850's when the slavery issue for the country apart. the republican regime orchestrated the industrialization of the nation based on the concept of economic liberty, the tariff and the gold standard. in 1865 the united states was an agricultural country about 30 million. when they were overthrown and

was a highly industrialized country and probably the most prosperous country in the world. that wasn't six ackley known by americans at the time. >> i met the party platforms of the republican party and the democratic party throughout this period. the republican economic doctrine is based on the four fillers, the gold standard, the protective tariff and export economy and control of the national market. it seems odd that the parties should have fought so hard over issues like the tariffs and the gold standard. the democratic party in the 19th century was determined to overthrow the gold standard, that is the party was all about. we talk about civility in politics. but if you read the party platforms, the democrats and republicans throughout this

entire period, it is anything but so. the other side is going to destroy the country if they are elected. third, the democratic welfare who regime tried to provide economic security for the working class with insurance, support for labor unions and stabilization of the economy through federal spending. i have a chart that kind of details the political strength of these three parties from these different periods and out you can see from 1800 to 1860 the party of jackson pretty much dominated the national election. it wasn't in oscillation of power back and forth. the party's control the system. this is to of the republicans afterwards and then it was true fdr and the democratic party.

importantly in this is the point i would emphasize and it may be relevant what happens to us today. in each of the circumstances the dominant party to gain control of the system they want a series of elections jefferson's party went into free contests from 1800 to 1820. the republicans won six straight from 1860 to 1880 with the help of the secession and the democrats won five in 1932 to 1948. this was necessary to allow them to implement their agenda and take through the country in a different direction. my thought today is one of the difficulties we are going to have his say still made in america the will make it difficult for us to change the past that we are on. there would be an extension of what we've seen in the past.

okay. those lines are percentage changes annually in gdp, gross domestic product from 17902011. what i'm not sure why i'm putting this up for you except to show an like a couple of points here look at the ausley shannon 19th century up and down. we have periods of tremendous growth followed by a deep depression and recessions. we had banking panics continually in the 19th century. there are probably seven or eight of them in the 1800's. in america we had just since the great depression we had won two

years ago with so the other thing i would point out is look at the oscillation in the modern period. these oscillations are much less from year to year will come the range is much less than in their early years. that if you spoke to an academic economist they would say that is the effect of the public spending to stabilize the economy said the media didn't go up quite as rapidly but the was the whole aim of the idea is to stabilize the boom and bust in the economy what another thing i would say getting ahead of myself this which the kind of welfare state and the entitlement state i'm not clear to dhaka foreign policy and national security situation but

what we have today is a situation where the state is telling that to happen with the capitol assistant. you can't conceivably pay for all of the obligations and promises that have been made without a highly performing capitalist economy. throughout the 19th century, the u.s. government was spending like something to were 3% annually gdp and we had one the recession without affecting the party system or the fortunes of the political parties. the republican party won the election in 1876 in the midst of the deepest depression of the 19th century. admittedly they stole that

election will but nonetheless it had to be a close election before they could steal. i put up their what a chart of all the way back to 1790. that's federal spending, u.s. government spending of the gross domestic product and economic historians are going back and putting that together. so, you can kind of siege throughout the 19th century when it's paid for by the tariff basically and one of the fights they had in the 19th century is what they're not the tariff should be used to protect the manufacturers and labor unions and workers or to raise revenue to pay the expense and the republican doctrine was the protection of american

manufacturers who then you can see the ratchet in the 20th century every time you have a war where it goes up it goes back down to where it was and then you see the continuing over the last 30 or 40 years, so i think right now we're pretty close to 25% of gdp in terms of federal spending that's because the economy with spending a lot. so there are some obvious parallels in the structure that might have some clues what we might look for in any new of people. that defense of the revolution and the conflict and the crisis of the 30's tended the political settlements that emerge lasted throughout their lifetime 60 or 70 years before they began to unravel. each cycle ended with the ouster

of the party dominated the previous and each change in the party regime brought a new set of governing elite with the newly empowered electoral groups. why importantly, immigrants were an important factor in some of these elections will certainly in the roosevelt coalition immigrants were an important aspect of abraham lincoln also the republican party in the 1850's made an effort to when the support of the newly arrived immigrant, scandinavian, german and he fought back against them and nothing party with in an effort to get those votes and win the support across the north to importantly, each situation and the newly dominant party had an early run of success that permitted its agenda to change the course of national politics.

more fundamentally each of these realignments is carried out and is maintained by one of the political party. following the election of 1800, jefferson and jackson their party define the parameters until the outbreak of the crisis in the 1850's to read the republican party led the nation to the civil war and maintain its dominant status through holguin industrial development in the midst of the great depression the democratic party organized a system and the politics of public spending and national regulation. the democrats completed the revolution after world war ii and the united states began its responsibilities commensurate with those it had assumed in the domestic crude the revolution of the 1930's would have been incomplete without a settlement of the war that ended with the united states, and power europe and japan on their backs to the

u.s. dollar what as the international system currency did not make it a very vital it's not just fun to deal it's the settlement in world war ii and the superpower status in the international economy. the dominant party might be called regime party because they are able to use their political strength to carry forward the basic theme around which the political settlements were organized. jefferson's party looks to the blues and democracy expansion and the freedom and capitalism, fdr the themes of national regulation and internationalism and in this sense the united states has had a two-party system rather one-and-a-half party system assisting the regime party and the competitive forced to adapt is now on the position. the competitors in the 1840's that democrats after the civil

war and the republicans in the postwar era won the national elections but only after accepting the legitimacy with the basic political fema established by the regime party. it's interesting to read the platforms and the democratic party in the 1840's because the assault the whigs for copying them we dhaka was the case to read the federalist party that died in the jeffersonian era didn't try to do that as a consequence of which they did it die out. new systems come apart when issues developed that cannot be addressed in the existing structural politics are resist the remedies that have worked in the past. such issues to report or discredit the interest associated with them. at the same time the permit and the politics of convention and

creativity. thomas jefferson and james madison invented the mass political party as an instrument by which they sought alexander hamilton and his policies he. though they thought the party should wither away in doing this, jefferson and madison developed a fairly sophisticated theory of parties and the 17 nineties and madison wrote a fair amount about this. his idea was that the republican system demanded a fairly strict separation in the civil society and the state and the state has to be accountable for the society and the system for the election and the representation system with. hamilton the asserted was building a party there for the state would assume a kind of direct and control over the

underlined society which is why jefferson and madison concert to what this was marked a call. jefferson and madison drew their imagery over great britain and the rise in the country party which was in the midst of the salt sea bubble in 1720 all of the imagery is there. there should be low taxes, there should never be a standing army, we should fight against corruption this can the doctrine of the party and that period and they were what you might call a country party that represents the hinterland and that's what that party was during the period. jackson had an irrational hatred

and in some respects i believe the republican party today has some aspects of the country party politics in the capitol, it's really great lili weekend new york, boston and as a consequence of that it can win elections but will also have different quantities affecting the period. it's somewhat ironic that that party fell apart because of the slavery crisis because the couple of persons responsible for the expansion was an issue of slavery in the territory. in other words it found to the koschel part the consequence of its fundamental basis of

american expansion the whigs and the republicans were or more less because they saw an expansion, the expansion of slavery. in 1940 and 1931 republicans in the midst of depression may have made the slump worse by doubling down on a policy that has proven successful in the past but that were a doubtful efficacy in the new circumstances prevailing after the great war to read what iranian by that? the gold standard and a tear for as long as america was and kind of an outline and a european dominated system and this was true of a week after world war i said the european power didn't

have anything against the united states or its tariffs but after world war i they were flat on their back and win the united states has the tiffin the have retaliated and one of the things that happens in the great depression of the united states what passes is that international trade cycle that contributed greatly to the great depression. this is not unusual political leaders will typically go back to what has worked in the past often unaware of the conditions that allowed them to work may no longer prevail. the question then is whether or not the party system is about to exhaust itself in some unnamed new crisis. the exterior in the 1850's and the 1930's. i come back to the platforms.

the republican party platform in 1932 spoke of love for the democrats had done in the previous congress and you could see the steam coming out of the pages as you read the platform because they couldn't believe that the democratic party was going to support the currency and the gold standard. they couldn't believe they were going on the balanced budget and they couldn't believe they were in favor. these little outlandish ideas and these have been ids that were in the party for a long time to really wonder why they oppose positive insurance the reason the question today in terms of bank lending to the democratic party emerged as a regime party in modern american but building around the claims

one the war against fascism and defended the working and middle class. these momentous achievement, the democrats won five straight elections from 32 to 48 and they controlled the congress of the late-1980s. republicans won control in the congress and the 1942 and 1946 elections the damage control, the congress when, the major policy achievements in the new deal and that society who social security, medicare and medicaid are widely popular. given the popularity of fdr and the new deal, republicans have little respect to accept the general contours and the new regime. fall/winter a landslide of 1936 they've now made eight succession of% of all candidates. will he do it now or next? we cannot challenge the programs. we are only promised to

administer them. among the candidates in the 1840's, 1940, 1980 you have to move back the new deal connects some say the new realignment can part in the 1960's and eventually replaced by the conservatives in the 80's. i don't agree. the protest was not in revolt against the welfare state or even against the democratic party. it begins against. many of the leaders of the 1960's movement, john kerry of bill or hillary clinton, they were carrying stuff that time that eventually and as for the reagan administration in this obsessing we buy them at the economy and given the new lease. the end of the cold war took the

national security issue off the table much to the damage of the candidates. whiteaker than ever succeeded. the mayor's like democratic counterparts continue to make the pilgrimage to washington in search of grant money for the states and cities just as the

members of congress from both parties run for the reelection by pointing to the federal funds they've brought back to their states and districts. nor have republicans have had much success in penetrating the need deutsch educational systems on behalf of ideas that have wide support. college faculties, editorial boards are liberal today than they were even in the 1960's. republicans have so far been unable to parlay the considerable electoral success into the commensurate influence over the cultural, journalistic and educational institutions. i think this is an aspect of the regime of politics once a party is able to take control of the system, that influence spreads throughout the political system and to the faculties, editorial boards. they tend to push their influence downward, and one of the tests with or not the party

is succeeding in that it or not, they have that kind of representation. if you look around american now, the democrats largely have control over those institutions. conservatives in fact it's done something different. they've created their own newspapers, magazines and research institutes even college and schools. they have in fact form their own to which they communicate by and wage warfare against the democrats. the two parties increasingly living in their own political and philosophical world which drive them further apart and make a compromise or difficult to achieve. walter russell mead has introduced the distinction in the blue state and read state model and the political development. the parties are increasingly sorting themselves out into different states and regions. it can proceed to implement with respect to visions of social and economic policy. the blue state model, the space

model, the administration from the new deal. it's based on the concept of the governments can underwrite working and middle class income by requiring the taxes and the public spending on education and health care, welfare and public employment. the red state model has implemented and various republican states the regime for lower taxes, lower public spending as a means of attracting business and promoting growth. california, illinois, new york, texas, arizona and indiana are types of the red state model. but when these tendencies are added up across the nation, they produce. as pointed out, the blue state modeled collapse because of the cross and the effect of the tax. this evolution the alignment between the two political parties to the beach controlling different jurisdictions, each

taking different views of taxation and the role of government, and each communicating manly but some supporters. if in fact the blue state model is dying, rather than and undoubtedly ended the regime of the public spending associated. so what are the reasons that thinking america's third regime and the new deal regime was to process of? these are familiar. the debt, demography, the polarization. within a decade the news factors may overwhelm the system of politics under which we have lived since the 1940's. let's see. that is a per-capita federal spending. it's gone from about $2,000 per

capita to $5,000. five times since 1950, per-capita income is, about three times and not period. >> i will get to that. real gdp growth. well, the debt is obviously the problem. a $16 trillion of debt, nearly 11, about 5 trillion to the foreign government, most of it to japan and china were funds with in those countries. it's something like $3 trillion the government does in the national security trust fund and those have to be paid back in the general revenues. much of this deficit and debt was accumulated during the period of prosperity.

relief from the 60's. we've only had to balance the budget since 1969. bill clinton had won in 1990 and lyndon johnson had one in 1969. i believe johnson was able to achieve ten because of the basic fiscal year. [laughter] typical of johnson in the fiscal year to october 1st or september 30 of which then enabled him to balance the budget, so clinton who did it legitimately i think. but in other words, the idea is we would run up the deficit when you have islam, large deficits when you have a slump, it would run at medium-size deficits in the times of prosperity. the u.s. government spending $3.6 trillion this year one-third of it is borrowed.

since 2001 federal spending has gone up roughly twice the rate of economic growth. interest payments are temporarily manageable. somewhere around $250 billion a year, less than 10% of spending. but that interest rates are historical low. our current situation is and know where comparable to that of the 40's, the national groups to the annual gdp. the spending went down, the borrowing stopped, and the united states seems to grow in real time for 20 years. that prepares the deficit with no problem. today everything points in either direction. interest rates are likely to go up, demand for for their spending. the state and local governments also rely upon the trend to the to federal transfers on books. the students come from the times about $100 billion a year for the general fund.

degette about $100 billion a year in terms of federal transfers. curious kind of programs. they depend on that money. and i won't get into the whole question of the public employees retirement system. aei does a lot of wonderful work on that subject. plant number two, the demographic trend is now unfolding r to make people with a bad decision forced. there are 46 americans age 65 and up to read this year there are 48 million people going from benefit to medicare and nearly. so a lot of people have those benefits to our under age 65 because of disability and other, other reasons to be even though they are having some difficulty still according to the census,

there are nearly 80 million bourn between 1946 to 1963. leading past 65 in 2011 the census estimates that as they age there will be 72 million americans age 62 and over by about 20, 27. 40 million. if we had an increment to account for those benefits under age, we could add between 80 to 90 million people drawing old age benefits and some in the 20 20s. this doesn't include the 55 million or so not growing and medicaid. in number that the increase by as much of a fair bit deutsch of the recently passed health care legislation. we shouldn't blame these beneficiaries. they relied on the services and

leaving social security aside, they receive services, but not money from these programs. the money goes into the pockets of the dividers. sure there is some connection there but who wants to go to the doctor and hospital people generally don't want to do that. the census tells us there are 158 more people on the u.s. to about 142 million are unemployed and perhaps 120 the payroll taxes there's something like 20 million people employed. the u.s. work force is expected to withstand by .6%. about half a percent per year. that's about 1 million people per year. this means that on average in the coming years, the work force will grow by 1 million people.

people will get all jobs, they have to go in the work force. people turning age 65 to expand twice that rate. even if we assume an expanding economy and declining unemployment rate, the nation will reach a point where there are less than two people working to support each beneficiary. in other words simbel medicare and social security as against perhaps 150 million people working and paying payroll taxes that's not a good situation especially for young people out there. then there's the problem of slowing economic growth which may be the most fundamental challenge of all. the u.s. needs a rapidly growing economy to pay for these expensive government programs and to reduce the debt.

a decade by decade is slowing down in the usa. during the 1950's in the 60's the gdp grew by an average of 4.3% per year. in the 70's, 3.7%. it fell further in the 80's to the 3.5% and 3.2% 53 that is the average growth during the decade. following the technology best. gdp grew from 2000, 2008 by the rate of 6% a year. if we factor the recession of 08 and 09, gdp grew at a rate of 1.7% and here for a whole decade. now on the past three years i have a deep recession and around only 2%. forecasters are expended for a fleeced 2013. beyond that, there was some divergence.

some. you will see the downward slope in the pattern of the economic growth. but from the 1950's and 60's which are a decade to the 80s and 90s i think that's a five-year average of changes in the real gross gdp. so that's a downward slope and it goes down in the last ten years. that chart is per capita gdp that takes account changing population and as you see its sloping downward. so we have a situation and this what concern all of us the rate of growth in the united states

we have a situation where demands for government are increasing. yet our capacity in terms of the performance of the economy. there are those that think the economy can absorb the rising cost of government and assume it will return to the crash trend. president obama's current economic report anticipates the economy will grow at more than 3% per year from 2014 to 17 at a 4.5% clipper for several years thereafter in other words it wasn't seen on a consistent basis since the 60's and that is a hopeful via. those are the rates of growth that could save us but even so it will pose difficulties would.

a recent address suggests the u.s. economy is unlikely to spend deutsch as several head winds he identifies including the slow down and innovation in the effect of the computer and technology revolution the demographic trends noted earlier in the aging population and a smaller number of people entering the work force, rising inequality, the leveling off of the population and the burdens imposed by the that taking these into account he thinks the u.s. economy may grow in the future at a rate of less than .5% per year. i have a nightmare scenario at that rate the u.s. economy said

they wouldn't generate enough income on the federal debt. let's assume future rates of growth fall somewhere in between these rosy and mike mer scenarios. we have the rates of growth between 2000, 2007. and the still generated without the demographic complications we will soon follow. that is real changes in the gdp per capita so we are not going fast enough to observe increases in the population. those are all difficult situations and it seems it is possible to think these factors could bring down the new deal

system. how they have been? well, what if you can't pay all the promises made? what is the political fall one as we begin to renegotiate promises, not fulfil this will go into the political process and create a contentious environment. number four, the issue of gridlock. i will just mention it. the current political regime his work place. the teacher unions controlled education policy. the plaintiffs in the reform, environmental groups that lack energy resources and so on. this is handled the story. these are what economists call rent seeking groups. they control or seek to control the distribution of resources to secure income for the members which wouldn't generate wealth

on their own. they suggest economies grow more slowly as much groups will supply and a gain influence over the political process. assuming the resources, reforms this is one reason the u.s. economy grew so loud rapidly, germany and japan took off after world war ii to read these conflicts to strip a network of interest groups that might have blocked the development. obviously we don't want to have the board with interest to the system. but a political people can change in the party regime could accomplish that as the sun. this man is one of the contributions of america's party revolutions. they clean up the interest rate system thereby eliminating roadblocks to reform, expansion and the dynamism.

ladies and gentlemen, let me see what else i have here. that's a chart on productivity. obviously going down from the 50's and 60's -- again if we have a declining work force for people that are retired you can make up with that. it's highly productive that isn't really happening in america. they have a blood and the internet revolution. but that is burned off as quickly. it shows the distribution by income groups and shows that i think the top 1% and a share of the growth of gdp coming and again we have the same thing going on. in the current period to read as

we are boarding to speak about, i would suggest that those numbers are artifacts. some degree, and there is research to suggest we put the artifacts in the stock market boom. wealthy people tend to own stocks and began at the expense of everyone else and how do you deal with that? inequality. well. the dow can go from 13,000 to 6500 flecha did before. that would solve the problems but when i want to do that. so, it's kind of a difficult thing to address. so, ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, america's regime as promised. her name of the economy and

still meet the goal of politics. america cannot give in to make on the promises that it's made. despite the efforts barack obama hasn't lifted the dream that he was over the u.s. economy. nor has any of the recovery in sight. it's better a matter of time before the voters of santa a party or coalition that can restore growth and dynamism to the american economy. that day there were opportunities ahead. all the more reason for us to grow our sleeves and get to work. what america's regime look like? that work is yet to be done. we hope it will take advantage of america's size, diversity and abundant natural resources to feed and it's far more abundant in human resources to the americans want to work. it's to give them something to work for. the fourth regime shouldn't make use of the four s, federal was

some, free and flexible markets plus fracking. [laughter] what the federal system sort out the competition between the bluey to devastate models. let the real energy revolution, not the phony the was paid for by the stimulus funds but the energy revolution run its course. it might save us yet. there are entrepreneurs and workers that had the revolution and from directions. an american renaissance maybe just ahead. by all means, let's hear no more talk of the decline at the end of america and all the rest. we have nothing to do lose but our games and there's a revolution to be one. america's fourth revolution. let's get it started. [applause] thank you. >> thank you very much free very

thought-provoking lecture. now we will turn to your questions. i shall also tell you that after jim takes questions we will have a reception in the lobby. ..

>> it would take a while for the voters to forget that. the economy was not good under barack obama but it was not bad enough. i would not over interpret the election. i am not sure if the republican candidate was great. i liked romney but often we elect presidents for eight years not very often we ouster president after four years. obama is a gifted politician.

the supreme court decision helped him, the economy bounceback from the up tick of the federal spending. and he had good employment numbers. i would not over interpret the results of expect them to win the 2016 election assuming they get a good candidate. >> [inaudible]

but it is stood curve republican party can ago that way? >> i would doubt that. the week partied developed as the anti-tax party. it 12 presidential elections for the democrats. they were a national party and torn apart by the slavery issue. i don't think the republican party and the whig party were that different. it was pretty strong party where with the republic can get the votes? ronald reagan did not

succeed. he had a successful administration. wrote i have learned parties don't disappear because somebody has a better argument but there is an event in society to stabilize relations. whistle-blower and the great depression. it is interesting we had 12 years of republican presidents but could not crack the new deal society system. that is a testament. if you look around what is the way out? look where the key groups of washington are they have a

significant stranglehold. i have not thought through how that might have been. abraham lincoln in one of the speeches said the same thing about the democratic birdie as a consequence for being in control. obviously the republican party would give the south stayed in the eugene? the democrats still had strong representation. maybe they wouldn't get slavery going that would have blocked american development as a was hot.

they could not settle territories over the slavery issue. the secession of the south was tragic but may have been positive. but that even broke the stalemate in the system. i don't see anything to break the stalemate it would have to be a large event. coming out of the trends that we discussed. >> [inaudible] >> cahal couldn't be possible with the 43 shame the government to have federal spending be a lower

percentage of gdp than what we are accustomed? between 18 and 21% and federal revenues have never been higher since world war ii. but you point* to the contradiction between that. could it be possible to get federal spending down as a percentage of gdp? >> you just broke down this. i saw your piece the other day. it does tend to oscillate but the federal spending was very stable through that old

period. even through the '70s so that is a hard question to answer. if we could have robust economic growth and have gridlock in washington gordy republic and administrations the economy could grow fast but you have the baby boomers retiring. of course, the democrats have the cost of medicaid. six years ago they have 35 million know it is 55 million and a the health care bill could drive up. they continue to rewrite the regulations.

as more people are eligible they tend to spike up. but the contradiction is the economy is not growing. the another thing is democrats get in they drive it up. they work the system somewhat more successfully. >> [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> in america? i don't think it is necessarily democratic. firewood think the way this happens is a model for pro i would guess somehow the economy is not growing and

cannot manage the situation and the voters change course. it may not have been and the stalemate could be bad for the economy. this is the conclusion i have come to the renaissance vision, i would like to see it happen. and the soviet situation is different and the soviet union is interesting case. there are commentators that

said this is not very stable. >> i am from an editorial board. are a enjoyed your lecture and the article before. one thing that we could say is there not go getters. [laughter] no friends. they are risk averse promise of loathsome their ways, they don't generally start so to beyond and zero

large youthful presence. >> certainly that is a good point*. and those that would rush out to protect the system to project their benefits for pro but that is where i would look for a revolt against the system.

[inaudible] [applause] baht's. >> figure in much

[applause] >> good evening distinguish gasper goalies and gentlemen welcome to the national press club with the fifth annual meeting. the conference on the world economy. i'd like to pay special tribute whose vision and philanthropy made this possible. the commitment to public service as ben said past and we're grateful.

to thank those that are responsible and to remove those key figures from a private-sector to highlight that be examined the full spectrum and in the effort with a forlorn addition to provided the store go details on the subject to discuss and liberate the writer famously observed.

>> wore it always interrupt the discussion. budget talk about the big issues we have assembled a panel of experts of staplers. the academy, a government private-sector and low rely on that as a member of the governing council, he let -- recently left his on-line post as did pretty manage change editor to become president of the research center next month. in his 30 year career but

the washington bureau barrasso the author of three best-selling both of the new lows of power in the but to put money in your hand and in your pockets brochure down at tateho bush but to receive the america both plans also to receive when and then to reach the

federal reserve. but in addition he also happened to the level of interest due does carolina please join me to loathsome hour distinguished moderator, alan murray. [applause] in. >> thank you governor for that generous introduction and be willing to overlook the disability of my all matter. [laughter] and we have been through the most expensive election campaign in the history of the world with over $2 billion spent over the course of many

months, repeated debates, when it was over we woke up in discovered nothing had changed. the same party is controlled congress with the same issues, same fight thomas same stalemate, same dismal prognosis for getting through the of stalemate but there is one issue that has changed that is immigration. not because it was the topic we polled on this issue and september and it you would expect jobs, unemployment, taxes, 12 issues and immigration was dead last. it was not of the top zero voters' minds or up for

discussion but would have been on election night more than 70 percent voted for obama and republican said maybe marco rubio is a right to. that shakes up the politics. there is a possibility of comprehensive immigration. that is what we talk about today and tonight. i commend the miller center to realize this is the issue ever betty wants to talk about. all of you know, in washington it is the in fort -- inverse proportion which is why the governor gave me a long introduction

of. [laughter] i think you know, these three people very well. was president and now is president of the university of virginia. also professor of sociology with labor and mobility issues. senator warner had the unbelievable temerity to talk to other members. >> before he was a senator. >> steve case chairman of the case foundation co-founder of the mayor, line and so we're

very fortunate to have seized pianos. they each have between five and seven minutes. and we will have a conversation. >> but we're looking at the immigration policy is and

how they interact high skilled immigrants. of course, it is an issue of higher education because colleges if the policies make it difficult for the international students, and then we need to cut back of the issue came to the forefront of recent reports by 2009 water the top two

actions of federal government, state, local, re search universities assure the ability of doctoral education needed to help me to national goals for energy and environment and security in the 21st century. the working group of the national academy inform public opinion, shape policy. that question posed by congress is pretty complicated and those leaders needed to put together a panel. from business, an industry, academy, government i have the privilege of being a member of the panel.

asking for action three universities with 10 recommendations with the time frame between five and 10 years. focus on policies more international students are applying to come. >> fact is because of the chinese food. but we benefit more after they graduate percolated is our national interest to attract and keep these people. many but to be as efficient

as possible and insure a larger number of researchers remain in the country to recommend to obtain permanent and let's grant to have the area of national needs there're a recent actions of congress and the house has passed h.r. 64 -- 6424 to create a green card program for those with advanced degrees. the senate will not consider the bill during the lame duck session but harry reid

has said comprehensive immigration reform will be a priority. there is strong bipartisan support to create a new visa program poor's stem graduates but with american universities, i want to take the opportunity to thank senator warner who has consistently supported immigration and. as evidenced by his leadership 3217 sanibel introduced may 2012 see u.s. educated form for him to have a green card and stay in the country. >> now you have to have